Reviewed by Mark L. Kamrath | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 66.1

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Reviewed by Mark L. Kamrath | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 66.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Brave New World and the New Historicism: Navigating the Early Republic, Intertexuality, and the Future of Print Editions and Digital Texts Mark L. Kamrath, University of Central Florida
The Contrast: Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic. By Royall Tyler. Edited by Cynthia A. Kierner. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 157 pages. $60.00 (cloth), $18.00 (paper).
Edgar Huntly; Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker: With Related Texts. By Charles Brockden Brown. Edited by Philip Barnard and Stephen Shapiro. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006. 313 pages. $37.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper).
Arthur Mervyn; Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793: With Related Texts. By Charles Brockden Brown. Edited by Philip Barnard and Stephen Shapiro. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008. 488 pages. $55.00 (cloth), $19.95 (paper).
Joel Barlow's Columbiad: A Bicentennial Reading. By Steven Blakemore. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007. 392 pages. $45.00 (cloth).
How much can a play, a pair of novels, and a lengthy epic poem from the Jeffersonian era possibly tell us about the early Republic, much less about early American historiography? What literary or cultural insights can be gleaned from juxtaposing an updated edition of Royall Tyler's The Contrast with Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly and Arthur Mervyn and a full-length study of Joel Barlow's Columbiad? Together this recently published work suggests not only that the New Historicism, with its emphases on greater historical self-consciousness and subjectivity, intertextuality, and cultural trace, has had a significant impact on early American scholarship in literary criticism but also that the ongoing application of New Historicist assumptions by historians, literary editors, librarians, humanities-computing specialists, and commercial entities alike promises to further shape how we research, read, and teach early American texts.¹	1
First performed in 1787 by the American Company of New York and then published in Philadelphia in 1790, Royall Tyler's The Contrast addresses how postrevolutionary republican virtue and its proponents can endure and transcend Old World European vice. Set against the American Revolution and Tyler's role in suppressing Shays's Rebellion, the play contrasts "urban vice and sophistication," often associated with Europe, with "rural virtue and plainness" (20). This social contrast is mainly evident between Billy Dimple, a foppish rake who schemes to marry Letitia, and Continental army war hero Colonel Henry Manly—two different types of eighteenth-century men. But it is also played out with Dimple's conniving servant, Jessamy, and Manly's loyal waiter, Jonathan, who represent opposite ends of the social and political spectrum.	. . .

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